Published in Overland Issue 205 Summer 2011 · Uncategorized Mary: A Fiction Eileen Chong [E]ither destroy the embryo in the womb, or cast it off when born Mary Wollstonecraft, 1792 No light streamed through the shutters when I woke this morning. I knew you had taken root this past night. I felt a curious quickening of my womb – with Fanny, I’d thought it the low anger of the crowds roiling in the streets, or the dull pull of hunger in the orange days of summer. I left the warm bed and your father, crossing the room in bare feet. My pamphlet read: Men ought to maintain the women whom they have seduced. At my desk in my nightclothes I wondered: What manner of child might you become, born of the coupling of minds as much as bodily passions between man and woman not bound by church or ritual but by poetry, argument and love? I imagine your violent entry, your searing cry, your relentless suckle at my breast. If you be female, I shall name you Mary. Perhaps when there are enough of us, Mary, we shall call the sky, the seas, the stars, the moon into being: we shall write of something that is wholly woman. We shall create without man. In my mind’s eye I see your perfect, infant fingers curl around a pen. Eileen Chong Eileen Chong is an Australian poet. She is the author of nine books. We Speak of Flowers is forthcoming from UQP in 2025. Website: www.eileenchong.com.au More by Eileen Chong › Overland is a not-for-profit magazine with a proud history of supporting writers, and publishing ideas and voices often excluded from other places. If you like this piece, or support Overland’s work in general, please subscribe or donate. Related articles & Essays 21 February 202521 February 2025 · The university Closing the noose: a dispatch from the front line of decasualisation Matthew Taft Across the board, universities have responded to legislation aimed at rectifying this already grim situation by halting casual hiring, cutting courses, expanding class sizes, and increasing the workloads of permanent staff. This is an unintended consequence of the legislation, yes, but given the nefarious history of the university, from systemic wage theft to bad-faith bargaining, hardly a surprising one. 19 February 2025 · Disability The devaluing of disability support Áine Kelly-Costello and Jonathan Craig Over the past couple of decades, disabled people in much of the Western world have often sought, or agreed to, more individualised funding schemes in order to gain greater “choice and control” over the support we receive. But the autonomy, dignity and flexibility we were promised seems constantly under threat or out of reach, largely because of the perception that allowing us such “luxuries” is too expensive.
